Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Who said the person was human?
Then I guess I do have a question : To your knowledge, how many sapient beings currently exist ?
A researcher in animal cognition said at a lecture I saw once: every time we look closer, we see more and more evidence of intelligent behavior in tinier and tinier creatures, behaviors we once assumed were limited to humans. He studied insects: bacteria have been shown to display “learning” behaviors.
How many beings are sapient? Wouldn’t be shocked if Future Being told me it was all of them
I hope the being from the future answers with a number, because “all of them” could mean “one” and that’s the actual thing I’m worried about 😆
To my knowledge, the sapient population is the human population of Earth.
However, there are numerous sentient species that could conceivably be "uplifted" in the next thousand years. Plus, I consider it more likely than not that extraterrestrials do exist and that there's likely another sapient species out there, though they are unlikely to be in our general volume of space